.NET

Visual Studio 2013 Update 2: TypeScript "In-The-Box"

By Adrian Bridgwater, February 26, 2014

VS 2013 updated CTP 2 and Team Foundation Server 2013 RC

Microsoft has released Visual Studio 2013 Update 2 (2013.2) CTP 2 along with Team Foundation Server 2013 Update 2 RC. This is the first 1.0 release of the TypeScript language and tooling, bringing it closer towards the final release as part of Update 2.

This means that TypeScript is now "in-the-box" (as Microsoft is putting it) with Visual Studio 2013. TypeScript 1.0 RC is also being made available for Visual Studio 2012 users as a standalone installer.

As readers of Dr. Dobb's will know, TypeScript is a language for application-scale JavaScript development. It is a typed superset of JavaScript that compiles to plain JavaScript and comes with a promise of running on any browser, any host, and on any OS. Types enable TypeScript developers to use tools and practices including: static checking, symbol-based navigation, statement completion, and code refactoring.

This release is cumulative and consolidated; i.e., it contains everything Microsoft has already released in Update 2 CTP 1. Also here, the Entity Framework 6.1 Beta 1 is now included.

Microsoft has integrated the latest ASP.NET MVC, web API, and Web Page releases (from the January release) and there is a new editor for SAAS files. A new JSON project item and editor features here to help developers create or edit JSON files in web projects. There has also been work to create integration for new Web Projects that streamline the use of Windows Azure as a website host from the start.

Along with various other changes and bug fixes that you would expect, the sign-in into Visual Studio will now integrate a streamlined Azure activation workflow for MSDN subscribers. This is intended to make it easier to take advantage of their Azure benefits.

According to Microsoft, "When signing in, users who have not yet activated their subscription benefits will be offered an opportunity to do so, giving our users another place to be reminded of the MSDN + Azure value. You can now use Windows Azure Notification Hubs to send test notification messages to Windows Store, Windows Phone, iOS, and Android devices and check the outcome in real-time."

Developers can now specify to compile their programs to target latest-generation processors that support AVX2 instruction sets. Microsoft always talks about productivity, so here we see that a new Incoming Changes indicator in CodeLens allows users to see incoming changes from other branches that could impact their code.

Also with a productivity-focused flavor, programmers can now use Code Maps to visualize IntelliTrace performance events to help identify the path to each of the slowest nodes.

Team Foundation Server 2013.2 RC includes a go-live license for TFS components and this release includes various improvements for Git along with Java builds for Git repositories for on-premises TFS.

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